I’m from Switzerland and I’ve travelled from Denmark to Iceland by ferry from 12 to 15 September 2015. I was traveling with a friend and Ole and I’ve met an talked sometimes. Is there a way to get an email address from him? We forgot to exchange our contact information.

Many thanks and greetings from Kolsstadir!Ursulaursula@westwind.tv

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Dear Ursula,

Thank you so much for your letter. What a breath of fresh air!

Maybe Ólafur Stefánsson will see this and drop you a line? We hope so. At least, you’ve just won our AWESOME LETTER prize, for being nice and for your letter not being full of either angry racist diatribes against refugees, or angry defenses of Israel (SO MUCH OF THAT recently. Apparently, the best way to win sympathy for Israel is going around yelling that anyone who criticizes the state’s conduct is a frozen-brained, alcoholic, whoring, cheating, whale-killing, inbred schmuck). Anyway, thanks for not writing a letter like that—enjoy your t-shirt!

Your Friends At The Reykjavík Grapevine

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Dear Sir/Madam,

It has become fashionable in the Liberal Left circles in the West to brand anyone who does not hew to their worldview as a racist or a bigot. You have only two choices in this scenario: either you acquiesce to their warped, politically-correct screed or speak out and risk being smeared as a lowlife of a human being.

Take the recent case of the disastrous proposal by Bryndís Bjorgvinsdóttir. Anyone opposing it has been subjected to vehement diatribes by the Left Liberal tribe, those self-appointed custodians of humanity on the planet.

Bryndís and her cohort of 10,000 do not have the right to alter the demographic composition of Iceland. Let there be a national referendum on refugee intake. And let there be honest debate where ALL sides of the issue are heard.

Have these people learnt nothing at all from recent history? In every single advanced Western nation where muslims have acquired critical mass there have been severe problems. This is a statement of fact, not hate speech. Why would Iceland want to invite trouble in one of the last peaceful areas left in the world?

If Bryndís wants to show her love for humanity, she should be taking in the refugees already in Iceland into her own home, paying for their housing and medical care. Is she prepared to do this? Or does she want the rest of the Icelanders to pay for her conceit so she can then bask in her pecksniffian glow?

The little boy who died on the Turkish beach is now made into a propaganda tool to emotionally blackmail tender Western hearts. He died not because of the evil policies of the West but because of the reckless decisions of his father. Worse human tragedies play out day in and day out in so many impoverished parts of the world. You won’t see photographs of those.

Finally – It is perplexing that large numbers of ‘refugees’ of the past few weeks are young men wearing comfortable clothing, sunshades and armed with smartphones (and surely with Facebook profiles). But then, when you have hundreds of Bryndíses in the West willing to drop the welcome mat of welfare benefits, who wouldn’t want to take up the invite? As I recently read someplace: Europe will run out of money and space far sooner than the world will run out of refugees.

Rajan Parrikar Mountain View, California

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Dear Rajan,

Thank you for your letter.

Now. It’s amusing how you manage to undermine every single thing you say (as if that was even necessary), by revealing that you obviously haven’t even bothered properly acquainting yourself with whatever it is you seek to discredit (Bryndís Björgvinsdóttir’s grassroots campaign?). The whole essence of that campaign, which has been embraced and celebrated by a vast majority of Icelanders—you know, those people who have every right in the world to determine what kind of society Iceland is and should become—is that people like Bryndís and others are quite literally offering to personally house the refugees, or pay for their airfare, or donate expertise or furniture or food or whatever else.

What is the Reykjavik Grapevine?

Your essential guide to life, travel and entertainment in Iceland.
Iceland's biggest and most widely read tourist publication. Delivers comprehensive content on all of the main topics of discourse in Iceland at each time: in cultural life, politics or general social affairs. A grand, continuously updated database of Iceland's main restaurants, clubs, cafes, shops, museums, tours and tourist attractions as well as a thorough events listing